Apr 27

Written by:
4/27/2010 6:17 AM 

(click thumbnail) Here's the RDS 'placemat' created by Lukas Hurwitz using www.phonegg.com, showing mobile phones that have RDS functionality. (Note, this is a large file.)

A person who brings a fresh perspective sometimes can give us … well, a fresh perspective.

Inovonics, which makes broadcast equipment including RDS encoders, has a new director of sales and marketing, Lukas Hurwitz.

I met him at the NAB Show, where he showed me a graphic he’d compiled. It demonstrates the significant number of mobile phones he found that provide RDS capabilities. (He used the comparison site www.phonegg.com to put the list together.)

He printed the graphic and laminated it, like a placemat, and showed it to folks who visited the Inovonics booth. I found it to be a highly effective visual.

“The main point of the placemat is to demonstrate the huge number of mobile devices, i.e. cell phones, that support RDS,” Lukas told me.

“Being fairly new to the industry, as I researched the technology I was blown away by the number of mobile devices that actually had radios, not to mention RDS. Having said that, in the process of speaking with dealers and broadcasters they were always surprised when I would talk about how many phones even had radios on them!”

After years of hearing our industry’s leaders talk about such a goal, this is a refreshing viewpoint.

He continued: “I think this is especially relevant when you ask yourself: Who actually goes out and buys just a radio these days? It's always included with something else. I think this is true here in the U.S. and especially in international emerging markets, where a phone might be the one piece of electronics that you own.”

He feels that everyone in the broadcast community can benefit from the knowledge that “this technology is a lot more wide-spread than many realize.”